Myth #1. U.S./NATO had to attack "the Serbs" because President Slobodan Milosevic refused to negotiate on Kosovo, a region of Yugoslavia where ethnic Albanians are the majority.

Reality: U.S./NATO bombs are falling on all Yugoslavs: Serbs, Montenegrins, Albanians, Hungarians, Romanis (called Gypsies) and other peoples who make up the multiethnic Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. There were no "negotiations." Instead the U.S. government presented an ultimatum to the Yugoslav government that NATO must be allowed to station 30,000 ground troops in Yugoslavia to ensure Kosovo autonomy.
Yugoslavia refused to negotiate a foreign occupying army. The only constant U.S. demand was that NATO troops must be based in Yugoslav territory.

Myth #2. Yugoslavia is the aggressor in this conflict and Milosevic is a "new Hitler."

Reality: No Yugoslav soldiers, planes or ships are attacking another country. The conflict in Kosovo is an internal issue. Yugoslavia is a small developing country of 11 million people, being attacked by 19 countries, including the biggest military powers in the world. Milosevic has been demonized much like Saddam Hussein was during the war against Iraq. A State Department official admitted: "The demonization of Milosevic is necessary to maintain the air attacks." (San Francisco Chronicle, March 30,1999)

Myth #3. Clinton, Albright and the Pentagon generals were moved to action by their concerns about "ethnic cleansing" and human suffering.

Reality: The U.S., Germany and other NATO powers played a key role in breaking up Yugoslavia in 1991-92, arming and supporting secessionist movements. It was the International Monetary Fund that demanded an end to "special privileges" for Kosovo in the 1980s. For 45 years after World War II the many nationalities that made up Yugoslavia lived together in peace. In the civil wars, which followed the bread up of Yugoslavia, there was much bloodshed and human-rights violations on all sides. The biggest single act of "ethnic cleansing" was the forced removal of 600,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of the former Yugoslav Republic Croatia by the U.S.-trained and armed Croatian military in 1995.

Myth #4. The U.S./NATO goal is to protect the rights of the predominantly Muslim Albanians in Kosovo.

Reality: U.S. officials pretend to care about the rights of Muslim people in Yugoslavia, while their policy of sanctions and war kills 300 mostly Muslim Iraqis every day--half are children under 5 years old.
The Pentagon is not a humanitarian relief agency and the corporate-owned politicians don't really care about any people -Albanians, Serbs, Kurds, Iraqis, or the poor and working people of this country.
This war is killing people of all nationalities in Yugoslavia, and poisoning their land with radioactive depleted uranium (DU) weapons.
There were no waves of refugees until the beginning of the NATO bombing on March 24. The U.S. government used similar scripts of defending civilians and stopping massacres to justify massive bombing campaigns in both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Again and again it was the massive bombing that created refugee crises. NATO has bombed refugee convoys, passenger trains and apartment buildings.
The real U.S./NATO goal is to break Yugoslavia into ever-smaller pieces and bomb its people into submission. The Balkans is a strategic region, a crossroads between Western Europe and the oil-rich Middle East and Caspian Basin. The U.S. has established, in only five years, military bases in the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia, as well as Hungary and Albania. The only hold-out -Yugoslavia.

Myth #5. U.S. news reports are balanced and impartial, giving us the true story.

Reality: What we see today is a gross distortion of the facts. The media is dominated by big business interests, and functions as a Pentagon propaganda machine. For political purposes, the suffering of only one group, the refugees leaving Kosovo, is shown, while the other Yugoslav victims of the NATO bombing are virtually ignored. The New York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Chronicle Examiner, and others have given a very slanted view of events in Yugoslavia, to justify the massive bombing. General Electric, one of the
country's largest military contractors which supplies engines for NATO jet fighters, owns NBC and co-owns MS/NBC.

Myth #7: The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) is a genuine liberation army.

Reality: The KLA is a terrorist force similar to CIA-funded Contras used by the U.S. in Nicaragua in an effort to over-throw the government. NATO uses the KLA to justify sending U.S. troops to occupy and further break up Yugoslavia. The KLA did not exist one year ago. Suddenly, it has the latest high tech weapons.
What kind of liberation struggle calls for the bombing of its own people and for a foreign army of occupation on its soil? This is the KLA demand.